Had it not been for Sin City, Saturday Night Live might have looked pretty different.
When SNL debuted in October 1975, it managed to capture the vibrancy of 1970s New York City within the first few minutes. As Don Pardo announced NBC’s Saturday Night and the “Not for Ready [sic] Primetime Players” in the opening credits, black-and-white street scenes with handmade splashes of color defined the earliest look of the show. That subtle yet electrifying style would carry into the show’s bumper photos—portraits of the hosts and musical guests that to this day bookend the broadcast’s commercial breaks.
Those indelible images were the work of Edie Baskin, who served as SNL’s in-house photographer through 1999.
For nearly 25 years, Baskin photographed every host, musician, and cast member who passed through Studio 8H, and inspired the aesthetic of SNL’s various eras with her bumper photos. Now, for the first time, Baskin has compiled the earliest chapter of that work into a new art book, Live From My Studio: The Art of Edie Baskin.
In a new interview with LateNighter, Baskin recounts her path to SNL and the work she contributed.
Baskin’s 240-page anthology collects highlights of her hand-tinted photographs from the first five years, which she created by manually coloring black-and-white photo prints with pastels, paints, chalk, and pencils. While that look was chosen to evoke the vibe of New York, its roots were in a trip she took out west.
“I first met Lorne Michaels at a poker game at the Chateau Marmont,” Baskin recalls for LateNighter. “We became friends, and he later hired me to take photos for a Lily Tomlin special he was producing in California.”
When Michaels moved to New York to launch SNL, he reconnected with Baskin, who invited him to her studio to see photos she’d taken of Las Vegas while on a cross-country trip. Baskin had hand-tinted the neon lights of the city’s chapels.
“He really liked them,” she says. “I asked if there might be a place for me on his new show, and sometime after, he invited me to 30 Rock to show my work to the heads of film and talent. They asked if I could do for New York what I had done for Las Vegas.”
With that, SNL’s earliest aesthetic was formed. Over the next quarter-century, Baskin shot and hand-crafted the bumpers for every episode. The process began on Tuesdays, when she’d photograph the host and have them processed in a lab.
Occasionally, Baskin would have to make do without a photo shoot. “The only challenges came when someone didn’t want me to photograph them,” she shares. “In those cases, I’d have to use publicity photos and find a way to make them fit seamlessly with the rest of the show’s look.”
Wednesdays and Thursdays were spent tinting the prints, as well as getting photos of the week’s musical guest. The photos would have to be delivered to the network by Friday so they could be filmed and inserted into the show. With the bumpers done, Baskin would spend Saturday capturing behind-the-scenes photos of the dress rehearsal and live show.
Baskin briefly departed SNL at the end of that first generation in 1980. “When Lorne left the show, most of us did as well,” she explains. But when SNL writer Michael O’Donoghue briefly took the creative reins during Michael’s absence/Dick Ebersol’s tenure as executive producer, O’Donoghue recruited Baskin to shoot a new black-and-white opening sequence; that was used from Seasons 7 through 9. When Michaels returned in Season 11, Baskin returned to oversee photography and work with production designers, then shifted to solely photography by Season 14.
Baskin left SNL for good after its 24th season, passing the torch to the sketch comedy series’ current photographer, Mary Ellen Matthews—who last year released her own collection, The Art of the SNL Portrait. But another 25 years later, Baskin’s influence remains. Earlier this year, she returned to collaborate with Matthews on SNL: The 50th Anniversary Special, which combined both photographers’ photos for each bumper.
When Amy Poehler hosted on SNL’s actual 50th birthday this October, Matthews paid tribute by recreating an image from Baskin’s original opening credits for one of Poehler’s bumper photos.
While Baskin might be best known for her iconic hand-tints, she tells LateNighter she would have continued to evolve SNL’s look had she still been there today. “I’d still make it my style, but I’d adapt it to reflect the context and technology of today,” she says.
Live From My Studio: The Art of Edie Baskin is available now via ACC Art Books.
